Cuban contender David Morrell (8-0, 7 KO’s) has netted a crucial victory by beating Aidos Yerbossynully (16-1, 11 KO’s) by knockout, thus helping to retain his WBA world title for the fourth time at the Minneapolis Armory venue held in Minneapolis, Minnesota on November 5. Yerbossynully was considered to be one of the highest-rated contenders in the Super Middleweight division before his defeat.
Both fighters started off on the right foot and it looked fairly equal until the last couple of rounds where Morrell seemed to gain the upperhand. Finally in the 12th round, Morrell hit Yerbossynully with a powerful uppercut that floored the Kazakh fighter and sealed the victory for Morrell.
Though exciting, the match has not ended without controversy. There seems to have been plenty of indication that Yerbossynully seemed badly hurt and unable to continue, yet both the referees and Yerbossynully seemed completely oblivious to this fact. With reports now coming out that Yerbossynully has ended up in an induced coma, serious questions now need to arise on the qualifications of all the officials involved with this match including the referee, medical doctors – who are always available for every professional match for cases such as this – and Yerbossynully’s coaching team.
Boxing is a full-contact sport, meaning that there is a legitimate chance someone can get hurt badly if hit too much, or left undefended. Yerbossynully unfortunately showed to be incapable of defending himself at the later rounds, which were further transparent when he was blinking during the match profusely, perhaps suggesting some sort of head or brain injury. Since no one seems to have noticed these key details, now that Yerbossynully is hospitalized, the question begs if there will be anyone held liable if Yerbossynully’s situation worsen. There have been a couple of fighters who have suffered career-debilitating coma’s after their fights, including Prichard Colon and Gerald McClellan, and though we do obviously not hope Yerbossynully’s career will end up ending like theirs, there is some serious concern regarding the behavior of all those who were present on that night.
The news of Yerbossynully overshadows the win that Morrell deservedly got, because all the supposed officials weren’t able to do their jobs when the moment counted for it. Yerbossynully showed clear signs of not being able to continue in the latter rounds, yet everyone after the match to realize this fact. This sort of negligence cannot continue at boxing. At Premier Boxing Vault we have stressed that we want to deliver unbiased reporting, but moreover we want to see the sport improve, not become ostracized or affected by simple oversights that shouldn’t have been made given we’re in a professional field. People will need to be held accountable as none of how this was handled is acceptable.
Other results on the night included former Middleweight world champion Jeison Rosario suffering a surprising knockout defeat against the lesser-known Gilbert Mendoza. Former interim Light-Heavyweight world champion Andre Dirrell defeated another highly-ranked fighter in Yunieski Gonzalez by TKO, thereby scoring a crucial victory for his own career and future world title chances. Julian Williams – another former world champion – also had an easy victory against Rolando Wenceslao Mansilla. Mansilla noticeably compiled a record of 18-12-1 along with 8 KO’s, suggesting that he was considered more of a tune-up for Williams whose last fight was a shocking split decision loss to another relatively low-ranked fighter, Vladimir Hernandez.
